Quotes from David Hackett Fischer

This was the rage of an oppressed white underclass, themselves trapped by poverty and ignorance in the new republic, and very different from the anti-abolition "broadcloth" mobs that multiplied in the 1830s. Broadcloth was a fabric worn by men of means in that era.

the two southern cultures strongly supported every American war no matter what it was about or who it was against.

political style characterized by intensely personal leadership, charismatic appeals to his followers, demands for extreme personal loyalty, and a violent antipathy against all who disagreed with him.

In American history, racism has not been a constant but a variable which came, went and came again.

New York City today still preserves qualities which existed in seventeenth-century New Amsterdam—and Old Amsterdam

race slavery did not create the culture of the southern colonies; that culture created slavery.

Without consciousness of contradiction, southern masters cast their defense of slavery in libertarian terms, and demanded the freedom to enslave.

The same cultural values which caused secession were also partly responsible for its eventual defeat.

Two generations ago, historians wrote of European saints and Indian savages. In the last generation, too many scholars have been writing about Indian saints and European savages. The opportunity for our generation is to go beyond that calculus of saints and savages altogether, and write about both American Indians and Europeans with maturity, empathy, and understanding.

To a modern mind, hegemonic liberty is an idea at war with itself.

Deference also had a reciprocal posture called condescension—a word which has radically changed its meaning

The island was said to be "completely covered with pigeons." Thousands of them fattened on the raspberries, and the settlers fed on the pigeons.16

The concept of chattel slavery was defined very gradually in a series of statutes through the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

Thus the fate of entire Kingdoms often depends upon a few blockheads and irresolute men."43

In the late twentieth century, national television broad-casters are trained to use the accent of Salt Lake City—the American equivalent of BBC English.

If slavery was not quite what Virginians really wanted, it carried them closer to their conservative utopia than any alternative which lay within reach.

When one southerner was asked why so many people were killed in his region, he answered that "there were just more folks in the South that needed killing.

From the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, six generations of American scholars were mostly Whig historians of their nation. Their work tended to center on ideas of liberty and freedom, equal rights and republican self-government. Major themes were the triumph of those ideas and institutions over tyranny and slavery.

New generations of scholars continued to study the same subjects, but in a very different spirit. Their work tended to center less on American liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy. It gave more attention to American slavery, racism, inequality, injustice, and corruption.

With many important exceptions, the tone of much American historical writing turned deeply negative during the early twenty-first century. It remained so as these words were written, in 2021.

Whenever a culture exists for many generations in conditions of chronic insecurity, it develops an ethic that exalts war above work, force above reason, and men above women.

One of the most stubborn myths of American history is the idea that the frontier promoted equality of material condition.

Long voyages under sail with crews that spoke many tongues made a ship into a language school.

Some of these words appear in metropolitan French, but a person of Saintonge who speaks the parlanjhe of the region is uniquely called a goulebenèze, literally, a happy mouth.